A French epic masterpiece and "must see" for movie buffs.

"Germinal", based on a novel by Emile Zola, is an epic
film
which studies the anatomy of a strike in a 19th century
French coal mine. During it's 2.5+ hour run time, the film
shows the wretchedness of coal miners, their deplorable
living conditions, their attempts to organize,
negotiations, strike, rioting, police suppression,
sabotage, etc. The story is woven around a handful of
characters who represent the forces at work; management,
union, profiteers, scabs, etc.

About Zola's novel, Havelock Ellis wrote: "It was neither
amusing enough nor outrageous enough to attract the
multitude". So it is with the film which emphasizes realism
over romanticism and exists more as a study of a timeless
social/political issue than pure commercial
entertainment. A must see for cinema buffs but not likely
have broad commercial appeal.

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10 out of 10 people found the following review useful:

And you thought YOU had it bad?

"Germinal" (French, 1993): This EPIC story, adapted from Emile Zola's
novel and put to film by Claude Berri (director of "Jean de Florette"
and "Manon of the Spring"), is the gritty depiction of hard working
coal miners in 1800's France, trying to eek out a living and better
their lives by forming a labor union. Loaded with issues rising through
the Industrial Age, Gerard Depardieu, Miou-Miou, Judith Henry, and
Jean-Roger Milo deservedly star in a frighteningly bleak setting, with
ominous musical scoring, and the relentless, black dust of coal.
Comparisons to the wealthy mine owners lives, opulent and very isolated
from their industry's realities, are blatant and clear. Zola wanted
some economic and moral balance  even just a little  and set about
depicting a situation that could not be denied.

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10 out of 11 people found the following review useful:

Very good movie for people who are interested in the life of the ordinary man during the industrial revolution

I've never been interested in costume drama's that deal with 18th and
19th century high society. As I once said before in another review:
"There is just too much gold foil, too much ugly wigs and pompous
costumes, too much over the top decors, just too much of everything
that I detest in it" and I really haven't changed my idea about that so
far. But when I'm able to see a movie that deals with the life of the
ordinary man in that time period, than I'm always willing to give it a
chance.

"Germinal" is such a movie that deals with life of the ordinary man and
woman. It tells the story of the coal miners in the region of Lille, in
the North of France at the end of the 19th century. They are all poor,
they work too hard in awful conditions and they don't get paid what
they deserve by the bosses who only want to get richer and richer by
doing whatever they can so they won't have to pay a cent to their
workforce. Of course the miners aren't happy with that situation and
when they get into contact with two men who both want to change the
situation, one a communist union man and the other one an anarchist,
the miners soon go on a strike, with some very unpleasant consequences
as a result...

What first went through my mind while seeing this one, was that this
movie has a lot of similarities with "Daens" (1993), the Belgian movie
that tells the story of the poor textile workers in Flanders at the end
of the 19th century. It's the same time period and both regions are
only about 60 miles or 90 kilometers apart. If you like to see what
life in the European industrial regions at the end of the 19th century
was like, than both movies are certainly something you shouldn't miss.

What I liked about the movie as well was that it had a good pace and
that it stayed interesting from the beginning until the end. It could
have been very easy for the director to make a movie about this subject
that lasted 5 or 6 hours, but than it might have lost much of its
power. Now, you get a pretty good idea of what life in that region
during the industrial revolution was like, without having to struggle
through too many details that don't really contribute to the story.
Next to the good story, I must say that I also liked the acting. Even
though Gérard Depardieu hasn't always made the best choices of movies
to play in, I always like him in the role of the ordinary man, the
underdog that has to fight the system. I liked him in the mini-series
"Les Misérables" as well and he has the same kind of role in this
movie. The other actors did a fine job as well, even though I have to
admit that I don't really know anyone of them, except for Bernard
Fresson perhaps. All in all this is a very good adaptation of the novel
by Émile Zola. It does exactly what I expected from it and that's why I
give it at least a 7.5/10.

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9 out of 10 people found the following review useful:

How in the world do you get out of exploitation by the rich?

"Germinal" is a vivid, colorful, eloquent rendering of how the life of mine
workers was in Europe in late 19th century. It is also a powerful
illustration of how a strike could come about in that time, and how
difficult - almost hopeless - it could seem for those dirt-poor people to
try and improve their miserable life conditions. Of course, the contrast
with the bourgeoisie is striking and thought-provoking. Depardieu (as
Maheu)
is, as usual, a giant figure, and most other actors are also very
convincing. One question that remains when you saw it all is : can you
really change a society's deep, unfair structure without
violence?

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16 out of 25 people found the following review useful:

genius

We should be thankful that there is a country that produces real films
- and of this scope.

I cringe to think how badly this would have been mutilated by Americans
- we'd have a happy ending, they'd "go easy" on the commie stuff, there
would be no premarital relations, the shopkeeper would be spared, some
bland and muscly "action hero" type would catch the saboteur character
and they'd fight with wrenches - sparks flying in the mineshaft. They
would take out all social commentary, rename it etc etc... And then -
the sequel "Germinal 2 - the Heroes of the Pit!" in a modern day
setting with oil wells and helicopters.

Anyway, in all sincerity, I hope the accountants of Hollywood never try
to butcher this story.

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9 out of 12 people found the following review useful:

a difficult task

Reducing Zola's masterful but monstrously long novel to a movie is the
problem that Claude Berri does not seem to have resolved. He sticks
close to Zola's text, which means that we get lots of undeveloped
snippets of what were very developed scenes in the novel. If you don't
know the novel, this probably causes a certain sense of confusion. If
you do know the novel, and it is well-known in France, you have the
sense that you are just skimming the surface. I think that Berri would
have done better to be less faithful to the novel, or at least less
comprehensive in his adaptation of it.

That said, there are most certainly good things in this movie. Miou
Miou delivers, in my opinion, the movie's best performance. No, she is
not at all the earth mother that Zola's la Meheude is. But she acts
with her face, saying far more with a facial gesture than many words
would have said. In a movie that skims over a lot of material, that
makes for very effective acting. Depardieu is sometimes very good -
physically he is perfect for the part of le Maheu - sometimes he seems
to deliver the lines without thinking about them. The actor who plays
Souvarine is very striking.

The cinematography is nice, but does not convey a lot of what Zola
emphasizes in the novel: the heat and lack of space in the mine
tunnels, etc.

A good movie if you haven't read the novel; a disappointing one if you
have.

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10 out of 14 people found the following review useful:

Good solid classic story-telling

A straightforward, generally fast-moving, recounting of a gripping social
struggle, portrayed without any special effects for special effects' sake
(though I think there was plenty of unobtrusive special effects), with the
emphasis always on the dramatic line; good acting by all concerned;
generally plain, clear photography that served the story-telling and not
some "artsy" vision--all these added up, for me, to an enthuasiastic vote of
"ten." Cannot praise this film enough. No, it's not some summit of art,
but it's a textbook example of how to tell a story, keep the audience's
attention, and honor the dramatic basis of the project instead of indulging
in "artistic" whims and triviliaties that will appear dated in five or six
years.

I'll be watching this one again. (By the way, I found the distant shot of
the striking workers marching across the plain especially moving. And I had
the feeling throughout the film that this was how things really looked at
that terrible period of French, and European, history.)

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12 out of 18 people found the following review useful:

A decent attempt at a complex story

Tackling a book such as Germinal is a mammoth task - and one that I always
thought was extremely difficult to transfer onto the big
screen.

There are two ways you can do it, keep it simple or explore everything and
bore the audience to death. You can see here that the director has decided
to keep the story as simple and straightforward as possible.

This means there are a few gaping holes in the film, as it ignores some of
the intricacies of the story and many of the sub-plots which punctuate the
story and add to the feel of the book.

In one sense he succeeds, as the tempo of the film is high and it rattles
along at a fair pace, not reading like a 2 and a half hour
story.

But the major drawback of this tactic is that Germinal ends up looking
like
a simplistic noble workers versus the greedy bosses story, when the novel
is
anything but that.

Scorn is poured on both sides with equal contempt by Zola, and plenty of
sympathy is given to some of the "wealthy" protaganists in the
book.

Having said this, I do understand that in order to keep the film from
turning into a 4 hour behemoth, you need to try and keep it as simple as
possible.

On the whole, however, it is pretty well acted and the art direction is
utterly breathtaking. The villages, the pits, the landscapes, the mines
are
fabulously shot. You really can feel the poverty oozing from every inch of
the screen.

Gerard Depardieu (Maheu) and Renaud (Ettiene) put in some pretty
convincing
turns but feel that Jean-Roger Milo rather over-egged Chaval, turning him
into some pseudo incredible hulk type character who is incapable of
speaking
normally. Judith Henry also seems a little to young and fresh faced to
play
Catherine.

I think I let my interpretation of the book cloud my judgement, and as a
result I was disappointed because I expected more from the film than I
should have.

Rating: 3 out of 5

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7 out of 11 people found the following review useful:

Workers struggle.

Big production values supported by the humane acting and a heart wrenching
story of poverty and misery. The script has a few gaping holes in it but
you
manage to overcome those obstacles and be affected by this touching
film.

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4 out of 6 people found the following review useful:

Good Intentions Perhaps, But No, Sorry, This Sucks

Making a two-hour film out of a 500 page book is tough, sure. But this
version stinks. I'm sure someone really thought (Claude Berri?) this
would be good. The problem is the film scratches the surface of the
world Zola created. An obvious example is the mine, Le Voreux itself,
in the beginning is described as a kind of living, breathing, horrific
thing that swallows humans by the cartload. The trepidation of Etienne
in going down to work is described in the book with such detail that
when you watch the film the reality of what horror it must have really
been is reduced to a simple look of anxiety on Etienne's face while he
comfortably waits to descend. There is no trace of the idea of Le
Voreux being a monstrous man-swallower. Missing this thematic point has
nothing to do with a film's running length. It's a classic movie
rendering of a book, without flavor, without guts, without imagination.
The casting is atrocious. Etienne is supposed to be twenty-one years
old, this guy looks well into his thirties (he was 40 in 1992). It's an
important factor. Gerard Depardieu is fat as Maheu, in the book these
poor people were starving to death, skinny to the point of emaciation,
yet here is Depardieu looking very well fed. Who said Depardieu was
physically perfect for the role? Are you nuts? These people were
starving to death. The way they portrayed the poor was so prettied up,
the younger sister was hunchbacked by malnutrition in the book but here
is a cute healthy looking girl of course, their hair is clean and
clothes relatively tidy, they look like modern people dressed up. If
they wanted to make it look real, these people would have looked like
they were suffering physically, as Zola described them. Malnourished,
with bad skin, teeth, etc. Berri or whomever didn't have the guts to
really show what they must have looked like, it would have been too
extreme. Yet the extremity is the book's central character in a way.
Without that, this is garbage. Another example, in the mines, in the
book, the characters would have to crawl on their hands and knees to
get to the seam in places, in pitch-black darkness at points, and
Etienne would have suffered all sorts of bruises and cuts, but in the
movie they just stroll on up to the spot. The characters and setting in
the movie do no justice to how the book describes things like the
temperature, freezing cold one minute and dying of heat the next. There
are many examples like this. I had to turn it off. The acting wasn't
that good either, not necessarily their fault, when they're forced to
generalize things that were compressed and not naturally developed in
the film the way they were in the book. Look, of course it's difficult
to adapt a book, especially a good book, but if you can't do it, just
don't. You're embarrassing yourself. The contrast between the classes
in this book and how it completely illuminates their difference make
the story make sense. This movie unfortunately doesn't come close. Only
stupid 21st/20th Century minds from the Civilized West could actually
think the poor characters in the movie were shown realistically as
impoverished. We have no idea. That's why you read the book. Make the
movie if you have the courage to do it justice. Without showing the
real conditions, the desperation of the people to strike doesn't make
sense, they have to be willing to die, because they're dying already.